John the third son of Andrew Mitchell Esquire, of Tilligrege married a daughter of Andrew Lumsden, Esquire of Pitcaple, Aberdeenshire. He also, being a staunch adherent of the Royal House of Stuart, went to France and then to Austria and Poland. My great-grandmother does not give his descendants further than that he had several sons, some of whom returned to England and settled there after the '45. The Rev. Andrew Lumsden Mitchell of the Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment was a great-great-grandson of John Mitchell.

I now return to the second son of Andrew Mitchell, viz., Alexander, who was my great-grandfather, and was born 27^th July 1689. Shortly after the time his father was removed from the post of Provost of Aberdeen, he was sent very young to France, and educated in Paris where his loyalty and his affection for the Royal House of Stuart was well nourished. He remained in Paris till 1720, when he married Lady Flora Forbes, a near relation of Lord Forbes, Baronet of Craigievar and grand-daughter of Lady Sophia Erskine, daughter of John , ninth Earl of Marr. Lady Flora was also a loyal adherent of the Royal House of Stuart and at the time of her marriage she was one of the ladies-in-waiting on the Princess Sobieskie, wife of the Pretender, claiming to be King James the VIII of Scotland and III of England. They had an only son, my grandfather, born January 1724 and baptised at Aberdeen in the name of James Forbes-Mitchell, (being named James after the King - the Pretender - and assuming the surname of his mother Forbes, prefixed to that of Mitchell. My great-grandmother afterward got Prince Charles Edward Stuart to use what she considered his royal prerogative to confirm the prefixing of the surname to Forbes to that as the surname to be borne by the family ever after as a means of perptualtin her own surname, and handing it down along with her property.

My great-grandfather and grandfather accompanied the Prince on his march into England. But my great-grandmother returned to Aberdeen, where her influence was required to assist in keeping up the zeal of the jacobities families, and to raise money to send to the military chest of the Prince. A few months later she paid dearly for her enthusiasm. When the Duke of Cumberland marched through Aberdeen on his way to the Highlands he considered my great-grandmother worthy of special attention, not only for her own actions, but as being the wife of one of the arch-rebels, and early in March 1746, a party of Cumberland's dragoons paid her a midnight visit and turned her out of her house in the snow, with only her night gown to cover her from the inclemency of the weather. She was glad to accept the kindly shelter of a gypsy encampment in the woods, from which she witnessed the plundering and burning of her house, which was left a blackened ruin by the orders of him who afterwards earned the well deserved sobriquct of "The Butcher of Culloden".

My grandfather knew well that for him to fall into the hands of Cumberlands's troops would be, if taken alive, an ignominious death on the scaffold, proceeded by every insult that cowardice and spite could suggest, for his name had become known to Cumberland and his officers. My grandfather, therefore managed to get to London and then to Holland where his mother had managed to precede him.

About 1775, after the return of my grandfather to Scotland, my great-grandmother, died in the Convent St. Cecilla, where her former Royal mistress, the Princess Maria Clementinia Sobieskie, had died in 1735. My great-grandmother had an annuity left her by the Princess on which she lived from the time of her escape from Scotland. Our family thus lost their place in the ranks of the nobility and landed gentry of Scotland, where our ancestors had held an honourable position from the time of Robert the Bruce, before the Stuarts had succeeded to the throne of Scotland.